Airline passenger news and views

A big problem with the third runway at Heathrow is that it simply cannot be justified in the context of the current climate change strategy. Perhaps the question that has to be asked is whether the policies of national infrastructure and climate management can ever be truly compatible. Maybe, we should follow the American example and simply prioritise competing arguments.

Lord Stern seems to have taken the view that, if we were to be constrained by our ­climate targets, the runway could not possibly go ahead. In many ways, that argument would be true of most infrastructure projects but if trade and the life of the nation is to go on, then something has to give.

Last January, transport secretary Geoff Hoon tried to appease both environmentalists and supporters of the expansion. He probably failed on both fronts and now, a year on, we are no further forward. Surely, what we need is a decision. If our trade requirements outweigh the environmental concerns then we make a decision to expand. If they do not, then we find an alternative approach. What is certain is that the longer we wait, the more alternative options become available and the harder it is to make a decision.

Decision makers have two obligations, firstly to make decisions and secondly for the decisions to be correct at the time. Any project that takes more than five years to complete is almost certainly going to be seen as wrong in retrospect simply because knowledge and circumstances change. That does not obviate the need to make the decision even if the decision is to do nothing.

Above all things, we need clarity and an end to the bickering.